Fourth of July at the Megamart

THE FXBG ADVANCE TUESDAY 9/14/26 MIDDAY READ

By Yam Munah, ADVANCE CONTRIBUTOR

I spent much of the afternoon of America’s 250th birthday floating in a pool. After record breaking heat and a trip to the hospital with what turned out to be dehydration, a floppy hat on my head and a cup of spicy fruit in my hand purchased that morning at the Latino Megamart was all the celebration I could muster.

I’ve never been one for the Fourth of July, anyway. Coming from a family of immigrants who were well-versed in American history (those citizenship tests aren’t easy after all), it is not the founding fathers’ mythical words that ring in my ears every Independence Day, but rather the solemn refrain of Frederick Douglass, “What, to the slave, is your 4th of July? I answer: a day that reveals to him, more than all other days in the year… gross injustice and cruelty.”

I’m a riot at Fourth of July parties. I once needed to exit one early because I burst out laughing when people earnestly began singing patriotic songs under the rockets’ red glare. And yet, I still get invited to them.

After several years of living abroad, this was my second Independence Day back at home. With the state of things, even my most optimistic of friends have come around to my point of view, and so this year’s party was understated, and I could skip the eye-rolling and loud sighs. Together, we were a collection of women of all backgrounds and races, simply floating in a pool together.

While they chatted and I lazily ate my fruit, I couldn’t help but reflect on the morning’s trip to the Megamart. Since January 2025, I’ve spent a lot of time in Latino businesses. I am not a Latina, but I look like one. Just like I am not a Muslim, but I look like one, or at least, America’s conception of one. My appearance means ultimately, I have borne the brunt of American prejudices when they’ve flared in my lifetime. The days and weeks after 9/11 were particularly nasty, but thankfully my family has instilled in me a sense of solidarity, rather than model minority-hood.

My appearance means I have heard the phrase “Go back to your country” for most of my life. The very first time I remember hearing it was in fourth grade. I punched him in the mouth, because my immigrant mother made sure she wasn’t raising a victim of American history, but rather a protagonist. And so, knowing that history is forged by those who refuse to be victims, I spent much of 2025 distributing immigrants’ rights materials in Latino businesses in our area.

As footage of ICE crackdowns, beatings, and shootings flooded our screens, as people like myself realized, yet again, we do not possess the same rights as others because of the color of our skin (as affirmed recently by the Supreme Court), my fight or flight instinct kicked in. With the help of a friend, I made Spanish-language pamphlets with legal information and resources, as well as hotline numbers, food bank. and free clinic information on them. And then I hit the streets, photocopies in hand.

Because of how I look, it was easier for me to maneuver the taquerias, pupuserias, tortillerias, tiendas, palaterias, panaderias, and mercados in our region. Offering apologies for not really speaking the language, I passed the pamphlets over the counter, and watched for the look of understanding to wash over the faces peering back at me. Often, an English-speaking teenager worked the front counter, and I would ask them questions about their lives. The answer was fear for their parents, their families, their community. Then there was the confusion and sadness from business owners, and more questions than I could answer.

At one point a local restaurant owner outlined to me the system he had devised to hide people if he needed to, adding that business was down from people being afraid to come in-person. I listened, a deep sadness hitting me as I realized this was the same conversation that occurred all over 1930s Europe. It had also occurred all over the antebellum American South, extending even well past Emancipation as violent and masked men continued to make sure our neighbors couldn’t rest, couldn’t build, couldn’t breathe.

I would have to admit, eventually, that I didn’t have any systemic answers, just some advice: Call this number if you see them. Take this friendly lawyer’s card. Set up a temporary guardianship so they can’t take your children if they come for you. Prepare.

“You are our neighbors,” I told them. “Real Americans want you here. Together we the people keep each other safe. Y el pueblo, unido, jamás será vencido”

The violence ebbs and flows. Sometimes it is quiet, sometimes it is loud. Things have gotten “quieter,” but not safer lately. A father murdered in Houston last week, ten thousand arrested in the last few days, but the headlines fade, the outrage moves on and elsewhere. Our neighbors are still here, though. Existence is resistance, as the adage goes.

And our neighbors are shopping at the Megamart. It opened a few months ago to some fanfare in a strip mall long abandoned by other grocery stores. That neighborhood had essentially become a food desert in an interesting part of our town, partially quite affluent, partially quite not. I remember my undocumented neighbor was so excited for the Latino grocery chain to finally come here, but was scared to go to the opening celebration, because surely, they would be there, right?

From what I can see though, Megamart is thriving. A neighborhood that desperately needed a grocery store now has one, thanks to immigrants. When I drop in, I see people from every walk of life in our community shopping. English speakers, Spanish speakers, Black Americans, white Americans, all making their way through aisles of products and produce that whisk me away to another world, a small mini vacation, and I get to be a tourist in my own home.

When confused, I ask someone, and every single time I generate a small crowd of Spanish speaking grandmothers and aunties who want to help me make the perfect choice. This sandwich, that pastry. We may not be able to communicate perfectly, but we can smile and point. I once read somewhere that the enormous American smile that irritates so much of Europe is the result of our immigrants having no other way to communicate with each other. I will gladly smile like an American then, if that’s its origin.

The morning of July Fourth, after running errands, I decided to stop at the Megamart. The parking lot reminded me so much of my mother’s home country of India. Such colorful foods and wares for sale under tents filled with laughing families. Existence is resistance, yes, but resistance is also joy. And joy looks like a smiling man chopping a coconut for you. A grandmother explaining in her best, broken English to me which baleada is best. Happy, toothless children picking out the most delicious paleta. The young woman behind the counter gesturing, no ceviche hoy, sorry, Valentina on the mangonada, or no? Hold the Valentina, pero extra chamoy, por favor. It took two trips to get all the fruit for the party to the car, and even longer to get on my way because I stopped and chatted in the parking lot with a West African woman who said she drives here all the way from another county just for the stellar produce.

What, to the immigrant, is the Fourth of July? It is a day of course, to reflect on the “gross injustice and cruelty” that is America, there is no doubt about that. But for this child of immigrants, this year especially, it was a day to float in a pool, half listening to the laughter of my girlfriends, eating mango, and reflecting on what it truly means to be an American. Because America isn’t found in a pyrotechnic show that blacks out the capital’s skyline, or in a sad and empty spectacle on the National Mall sponsored by Lockheed Martin and Palantir.

America is the uncle on the corner selling sliced fruit, the neighbors who invite each other over to the pool during a heat wave, who come bearing things to share, and finally, the people who refuse to flinch or look away from the violence, but who create the joyful, protective communities instead where we mingle and thrive together—communities where “We the People” means every single one of us.

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Yam Munah is a recently repatriated American and recovering existential migrant, who, in

between her day job(s), enjoys writing about the human condition and having tea with her East

German grandmother on her dairy goat farm. You can read more of her work at her Substack, Postcard from the End.